The Vile Ones
by GubbinsMcGee
Summary: Two paths combine when Daniel Grayson and Ellie Brockwell, a doctor and a patient at Brahams Hospital, are both sucked into a living nightmare. Grayson, a level-headed and analytical man, is frustrated by the case of Ellie's death. As he begins to understand Ellie's insanity, he is plagued by the vision of his missing child, realizing that there may be another world inside his own.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: Winter

It was snowing outside. Sitting in the parking lot of Brahams Community Hospital in a space marked with his name, Dr. Daniel Grayson watched heavy snowflakes gather on his windshield. With the car's engine off, the air inside was slowly growing cold. Daniel felt gusts of wind rocking his vehicle side to side as the freezing gale whistled between perfectly-lined trees leading to the hospital entrance. It was early in the morning and Dr. Grayson had been called in for specific purposes, but he almost considered starting his car and going back home.

With a sigh, Dr. Grayson unbuckled his seatbelt and shoved the car door open, stooping down for a moment to grab his laptop case. Just as he slammed the door shut against the angry wind, his eyes were drawn to a fourth story window. Inside, a young nurse was folding sheets and placing them on a metal trolley, completely stripping the room and everything inside of it. She glanced out the window with a tired stare, saw Daniel, and turned to say something to another nurse. _Too late to go home now,_ Daniel thought.

The yawning staff members at the front desk chattered quietly amongst themselves as Dr. Grayson entered, brushing snowflakes off the top of his blonde and gray-streaked head. One of the women murmured a 'good morning' to him, to which he responded with a nod. On a normal Wednesday, Daniel would head straight for his office, check his email, and then take a look at his schedule for the day. But today, he made his way first to the fourth floor.

By the time that Dr. Grayson arrived at room 416, the patient's body had already been removed from the premises. The patient in question was only under his care for a short amount of time—a week at most—but had been a resident of the Braham's Community Hospital for almost a year. Her file said "schizoaffective", "severely anxious" and "detached from reality" among other things. In the brief time Daniel Grayson had known this particular patient, she hardly uttered a single word to him. Of course, Grayson was not a psychologist. He was a doctor of medicine; and this particular patient, with her habit of forming open wounds even under constant surveillance, was his latest failure.

A pretty young nurse with an unhappy look on her face met Dr. Grayson at the door to room 416. "They're gathering her things from her room back in the Psychiatric Wing," she said as she nodded towards two of her co-workers who were walking in the opposite direction. "I'm sorry we didn't call you soon, Doctor. There wasn't any warning. She was fine one minute and the next…"

Daniel gave the nurse a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "I know," he said solemnly. "Just let me know when the examiner has a clear cause of death, alright?" He reached toward the door and pulled away a slip of printed cardboard just under the room number. The name "Brockwell, E." was written across it like a welcome mat for friendly guests, only there were never any guests. The girl was a mystery. It was clear to Dr. Grayson that she would now stay a mystery.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Home

Ellie Brockwell's dead gaze was fixed on Dr. Grayson through his computer monitor. The photograph, which showed a modest view of the girl's body from her head to her collarbone, had just appeared in Daniel's email with an attached description of the cause of death. Daniel Grayson was not new to injury or death. He treated victims of physical trauma every day, but Ellie Brockwell was a strange case. Her injuries, visible even with only a small segment of her body in photograph, consisted of both stitched and open gashes, bruising, internal hemorrhaging, and surprisingly, sexual trauma. These were typical wounds that Dr. Grayson saw in victims of long-term abuse, but to appear over night with no probable cause was what made Ellie Brockwell so unique. Even with video surveillance and complete solitude, the young girl still appeared each morning on the floor of her room, beaten and bloodied, as though she was stolen away in the night and then dropped back in place.

The medical examiner concluded Ms. Brockwell's cause of death as "exsanguination by self-inflicted injury". Grayson knew that wasn't true. He counted off the precautions: they clipped her nails, removed any blunt or sharp objects from her room, and even cut her hair to the shoulders to avoid possible strangulation. _There's no way she did this herself,_ Grayson kept repeating.

It wasn't like Daniel to obsess over a patient like this. He took pride in his objective demeanor and attention to fine details. In every way, Daniel was a man of business.

The only thing he feared was failure.

Daniel turned off his computer monitor and checked his watch; 11:24am, it read. The staff would have surely finished cleaning room 416 by now. Leaving his bag sitting on his chair and taking only his office keys, Daniel got up and left with his door locked and the light turned out.

The fourth floor was relatively barren. It was reserved for patients with common, usually non-critical wounds, when the second and third floors were filled. Only two nurses were on shift in the halls. One of them was escorting a cart of dirty laundry to the washroom while the other sat behind a desk flipping through a book. Grayson managed to slip out of the elevator and towards room 416 without being bothered.

Room 416 was lonely. The only things left were a sheet-stripped bed and a collection of folding chairs propped against the wall. The floor had been recently mopped and smelled of cleaning chemicals. No stranger would have guessed that less than a few hours prior, the floor was positively red with blood.

Daniel took a quick look around and noticed nothing of significance left in the room, at least not visible to the eyes at first glance. It was then that he closed the door quietly behind him and got on his hands and knees to peer beneath the bed. Squinting into the darkness, Daniel searched around between the mattress and the floor, seeing nothing but dust and an electrical cord. Then, there was something etched into the floor itself. Daniel reached an arm into the darkness and felt a set of scratch-marks dug deep into the wood planks. His eyes followed the marks towards the wall, where they were joined by a twin set of scratches; eight fingers in all.

The unexpected signs of struggle caught Dr. Grayson off guard to say the least. He stood up, grimacing as his knees cracked, and examined the way the scratch-marks led to the wall. There was nothing at the end: no door, no window, not even a vent.

There was nothing left to see. Daniel Grayson went back to his office and finished the most urgent of his paperwork, leaving a stack off to the side as to say 'those can wait'. After several cups of coffee, an uneventful trip to the hospital cafeteria, and half-a-dozen quick visits to patients under his care, Dr. Grayson made the dull, quiet trip back to his home outside Brahams.

For a man who made more money than the average American, Daniel's accommodations were less than impressive. It was a modern home with little embellishment on the outside and even less on the inside. Daniel, being an unmarried man without much taste for decoration, was satisfied with this.

After dark, when Dr. Grayson was just arriving home, he would often feel a momentary chill while standing at his front door and searching for his keys. Although he didn't give any thought to urban legends, he still gave a cautious look behind himself before entering, and he never closed the door behind him without first turning on the lights.

This time was no different. Daniel locked his car doors, drew the house keys out of his coat pocket, looked over his shoulder twice, and turned the knob.

Only when the ceiling lights came to life did Daniel notice the gaping hole in his kitchen floor.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three: Time to Go

Daniel approached the unwanted renovation that had appeared in his kitchen; a massive hole, five feet in diameter at least. For a moment, Daniel wondered if a meteorite had crashed into his house, but the ceiling was left intact and nothing else had been damaged. There was only the massive gaping hole in his kitchen floor.

Quietly cursing under his breath, Daniel craned his neck to see if anything had been left underneath the floorboards, but what he saw was unexpected. There was no ground underneath the wreckage. The hole kept going until its walls were hidden in shadow as though carved by a drill. Daniel's feet creaked against the loose floorboards that surrounded the seemingly bottomless pit. What started as a possible prank was beginning to look much more sinister.

Not at all eager to test the bottomless pit for himself, Daniel turned with the intent to call 9-1-1. Before even taking a step, he froze.

The front door was still open. A lone figure stood in the threshold, but before Daniel could blink his eyes even once, the silhouette flicked the light switch and slammed the door behind itself. Daniel was plunged into almost utter darkness, the only light being a faint glimmer from a lamppost on the other side of a window. His eyes were drawn to the light, just as a dark blob passed quickly over it.

With a startled gasp, Daniel reached out into the darkness for anything his hands could find. Underneath his knees, the loose floorboards creaked and bent under his weight. He reached into his coat pockets frantically, searching for his keychain and the small flashlight hanging from it.

"Okay, it was funny while it lasted!" Daniel yelled out into the darkness. "If you leave now, I won't call the cops!"

He gripped the tiny flashlight in his pocket, held it in front of his face, and pressed the button.

"It's time to go," a tiny female voice whispered just as Daniel's flashlight came to life. The light fell on a familiar face. A young woman sat on the kitchen counter, legs parted lazily and her arms held above her head with a length of chain. There was no mistaking the tufty red hair and freckled nose.

"Brockwell." Daniel recognized his patient. Before realizing the impossibility of her visit, Daniel scanned the girl's bruised and beaten flesh. Thin streams of blood traveled down her arms as the chains that connected her to the ceiling dug further into her wrists. Where she sat, the room seemed darker. Older. Tarnished.

Daniel felt himself being pulled backwards—not by hands, but by magnetism.

Ellie Brockwell turned up her empty green eyes. "I'll see you soon, Dr. Grayson," she murmured.

The warped boards under Daniel's weight gave in. He tried to reach for the floorboards, but his desperate attempts failed him. The last thing Daniel saw before being plunged into complete darkness was the ceiling lamp, flickering overhead. It shone for a second, then disappeared, and finally sputtered out just as Daniel felt his body crash to the bottom.

_He remembered it clearly…the night he took those slow, careful steps down the stairs and found his ex-wife sobbing at the kitchen table. Lorraine's hands were clawing at the sides of her head, entangled in her hair. Hearing Daniel's footsteps creaking on the last stair, she turned with a startled gasp. With the phone in one hand, she gave him a tearful, pathetic look. _

_ Lorraine let out a built-up sob, resting her head against the table beside a framed photograph of a six-year-old girl with brunette pigtails. _

_"They found her."_

Dust rose from around Daniel's aching body. The violent thud that followed his collapse echoed for a moment and disappeared, replaced with the slow and rhythmic creaking of the house as it settled. His flashlight slowly scanned from the ceiling to the walls. Daniel realized immediately that these were his things; but, nothing was quite the same. His dining room table was collapsed on one side, two of the legs broken off. Chairs were overturned, light-bulbs were now only shattered piles on the floor, and the wallpaper had all but completely peeled away. With a sickened feeling in his stomach, Daniel pushed himself up from the filth-covered floor and grimaced at the cobwebs in the corners.

All at once, he remembered Ellie Brockwell. Turning swiftly with every intention of raising his voice to the girl, Daniel was surprised to find the countertop abandoned. Where Ellie had sat, there were now two loose-hanging chains swinging from the ceiling. On the countertop, trickling down, was a thin stream of blood that collected in a puddle on the grimy linoleum floor. Daniel swallowed a lump in his throat, covering his nose to block out the musty smell around him. It was no use—he could taste it with every breath.

Daniel held his flashlight to his chest, feeling an eerie chill go up his spine. In his rational mind, there was only one explanation. This was a lucid dream. There was no Ellie; how could there be? There was no hole in the dining room floor, no peeling wallpaper, no cobwebs. None of it was real, and so why wasn't Daniel waking up?


	4. Chapter 4

"Jean, I did it."

Ellie sat on the ground with her limbs splayed awkwardly to each side. In a narrow alley between buildings, the fog became thinner and the silhouette of a woman appeared clearly in front of her.

The young Jean, whose dark brown hair was pulled into messy braids, leaned down and pinched Ellie tenderly on the chin. "Good girl," she said in a soft, raspy voice. Ellie looked up at her with an emotionless expression, which Jean answered with a satisfied grin of her own. "You can sleep now."

Jean looked down with a hidden sense of disgust at the woman curled up on the pavement. They could be the same age; so why did this redhead remind her of an infant? Ellie's knee-length asylum gown had been torn, frayed, and covered in blood and filth to match her skin. Fresh bruises in the shape of enormous handprints littered her arms, legs, and neck. The girl's weakness and self-loathing was necessary for her purpose, but Jean couldn't help but find her revolting. Pathetic Ellie and her twisted brain...Jean had no more use for her.

_"There's only one reason I'm not killing you," _Jean thought as she looked down at the wretch she was tempted to kick. _"This town needs a new innocent…_

_ "And once it's born, you can sleep forever." _

With eyes half-closed, Ellie watched Jean's ankles pass her head and disappear with slow, echoing footsteps. Left alone on the concrete like a defenseless pup, she stared at nothing in particular. Her big green eyes, once filled with childish wonder, were now pale and empty. She didn't cry. She deserved all of this. She pulled her legs in closer, aching both inside and out, and closed her eyes knowing that she would have peace if only for an hour or two.

_Ellie Brockwell was fifteen the day the walls started moving closer. It started simple: occasionally, a headache would blind her for a moment or the rain would move up instead of down. Long hours were wasted staring at the ceiling, but Ellie didn't remember. She missed days and even weeks at a time, until she made the decision to never leave her bedroom again. With the windows covered and the door barricaded, things were normal. She hoped that in complete darkness, she wouldn't see the distorted faces pressed up against the window glass or the way the trees seemed to beckon her with claws. _

_ It took Ellie a long time to realize the consequence of her illness. The moment her physician began talking about admittance, her father drifted further and further away. She didn't blame him. _

_ Daddy left, ashamed, and started over with a new wife and new children. Soon after, Mommy left too, but didn't have the will to try again. Her gravestone was blank beneath her name. No one would ever know she was a mother. _

_The Brockwell family was a failed structure and Ellie was the pillar that cracked first. _

For a moment, Daniel hesitated to go up the stairs. The first footfall creaked louder than he had anticipated, followed by an uneasy silence. He shined his flashlight to the top stair. Nothing was moving up there in the darkness. He waited, taking small shallow breaths, almost expecting something to appear.

Nothing did.

Daniel took slow, cautious steps as his light wandered, shaking, peering around the corner. A second-story window covered in grime reflected the light back while its tattered curtain swayed against a non-existent wind. At the top of the stairs, everything was just as Daniel had left it. A potted plant sat undisturbed on its glass table, only now the leaves and stalk were withered to a sickly brown. The bookcase at the end of the hallway was hidden by a film of cobwebs and dust. Daniel grazed his hand along the wooden bannister, cold to the touch and leaving a dry residue on his fingertips. Only one door was open; the door that was never supposed to be open.

The sun was shining through the window. A small plastic table adorned with false cakes and a floral teapot sat untouched in the center of the room. The little teacups were nestled comfortably on their individual plates. Brightly-colored toys and charming stuffed animals were scattered across the floor, but none of them were covered in dust. Daniel stood in the doorway, mouth agape and brow furrowed in a mixture of confusion and pain. He watched the room change before his eyes from what he remembered to what he truly saw. The little plastic table tilted on a broken leg. The little teacups slid off of the surface and overturned on the floor. The stuffed animals turned weary and tattered, their stuffing bursting from torn seams. The window, with its lace curtains swaying, suddenly turned dark and still in the sun's absence.

Daniel slowly knelt to the floor, turning off his flashlight as though admitting defeat, and laid himself down in amidst the destruction.

A sound gently pulled Ellie out of a brief and dreamless sleep. The low mechanical drone rose and fell behind a piercing metallic grind. The girl opened her eyes while her plump gray lips parted in a quiet sob, and watched the darkness thicken around her. She didn't bother to stand or to even crawl away. The rhythmic grind of metal against concrete grew louder, each pull followed by a hollow thump. As the graffiti-stained walls of the alleyway began to shed and reveal the burnt foundation beneath, Ellie closed her eyes tightly and bit down on her lip.

The world grew silent, but only for a moment.

A colossal hand gripped Ellie's ankle, and in the blink of an eye, the girl had been pulled into the darkness, leaving only a scream behind.


	5. Chapter 5

Jean made the sign of the cross over her chest before walking up the cathedral steps. She brushed off both of her arms, if not to dust away the filth than to dust away sin. At the top of the stairs, a man was waiting for her with a welcoming smile.

"Quickly," he said, patting the young woman on the back. "Get inside, where it's safe."

Jean raised the hood of her sweatshirt as she crossed the holy threshold. On either side of her, parishioners were seating themselves in the pews with hoods and veils lowered. Familiar faces nodded as she passed. A strange sense of fear was crawling under the surface of her skin. Would they see that she had been so near contamination? Would they know from a look or a smell that Jean, for a single moment, had touched the witch?

As she sat herself down in a bench, Jean looked at her hands and regretted those seconds they had spent cupped beneath Ellie's chin. All at once, she furiously rubbed her hands against the knees of her pants as though a residue had stained them.

A man, cleaner and tidier than anyone else in the room, stood before the parishioners and hushed them all with a wave of his hand. His bespectacled eyes glanced about the room. "We've become less," he said solemnly. He was right. Jean scanned the pews and noticed more than a few empty seats.

Jonah had not been a priest of The Order for long, but his presence had always been powerful. Nothing happened in Silent Hill that was not directed by his hand, or else brought to his attention; nothing, except for Jean's secret project. In time, Jonah would find Daniel wandering the streets or perhaps only his remains. The exact detail of his fate wasn't important. The most important part had already been ensured. He was here, where Jean had been all these years, and there was no way out.

As Jonah led the congregation in a prayer, Jean solemnly drew the figure of the cross over her chest and followed along from memory.

_Don't forget. You deserve this, _Ellie whispered to herself in her dank, humid space. A set of chains held her wrists to the wall, but they were unnecessary, as the girl made no struggle or attempt to flee. She learned early on that fighting back only made the pain worse. The fiend enjoyed watching her squirm. It took pleasure from the sensation of her fingernails against its skin and her desperate punches and kicks. The chains now served as a sort of symbol, reminding Ellie that she had no power.

From the darkness behind her eyelids, Ellie felt a heavy presence enter the room. Lumbering footfalls against a concrete floor slowly approached where she stood, limply suspended against a basement wall. Ellie cracked open her eyelids and squinted through the darkness, lit only by the faint orange glow from a sputtering light-bulb. The strobe-like flicker shone off the edges of a colossal figure. The creature was masculine and intimidating, from its scarred and bloodied muscles to the heavy metal pyramid placed on its shoulders. While its eyes were hidden by the massive pyramid, the chill that traveled up Ellie's spine convinced her that it was looking at her. With a heavy 'clunk', the Red Pyramid dropped an enormous blade to the cement floor and reached out his calloused hands to brush the hair from Ellie's throat.

Ellie bit her bottom lip in anticipation. Her captor brushed his cold, hardened knuckles against the warm skin below her face, briefly touching the sensitive bruises. The creature reveled in the heat rising from the girl's wounds and took a gentle grip around her throat, slowly squeezing tighter and tracing the hand-shaped wound he had left before. He forced a small whimper out of Ellie, much to his enjoyment. While she attempted to stay still and quiet, the Red Pyramid aggravated her wounded skin and wished for a scream, a cry, or a squirm.

The fiend got what he wanted the moment he pushed Ellie's chest into the cold cement wall. The girl let out a yelp and squeezed her knees together tightly, only tempting her captor to force them apart again. The creature spoke no words, but uttered a low animalistic growl that reverberated off the walls of his metal prison. His rough hand loosened its grip around Ellie's throat and traveled down her body, tracing the wounds he had inflicted on her breasts and pausing briefly to press his palm against her stomach. He enjoyed the warmth of her plumpness through the fabric. Ellie's tear-streaked face turned hot with embarrassment and a familiar sense of horror as she noticed the fiend's protruding bulge rub against her lower body. Then, with one movement, the Red Pyramid tore Ellie's dress along the makeshift stitches she had fashioned, throwing it to the ground to stew in the dirt and filth.

Ellie had tried so hard to be still, but she watched as her sobs and pathetic squirms excited her brutal captor. As he pushed down the band of his apron to grab hold of his eager phallus, young Ellie squeezed her eyes shut and tried to calm her trembles of fear. Even with her teeth clenched, she couldn't help but let out a yell of pain as the Red Pyramid pressed a cold, rough hand around her breast and gripped the thick, sensitive tissue. The fiend poked at her open wounds, pinched her bruises, and beat her aching bones against the wall just to hear the girl's terrified responses.

Had the chains not been in place, Ellie would still be defenseless. The Red Pyramid lifted her easily with one arm and gripped one of her flailing legs with the other. Without effort, he pried her legs apart and forcefully pushed his body against hers, penetrating her and tearing her open just as he had done several times before. Hot streams of blood began covering them both. Ellie screeched in pain; she was so small and weak in comparison to her abuser, and yet the creature showed no mercy or benevolence. A low moan escaped from inside the creature's pyramid crown as he forced Ellie's thighs against the wall in a full spread and pushed himself further into her. His skin, cold and clammy with death, trembled pleasurably against Ellie's warm flesh and absorbed her heat and her life.

The fiend placed one colossal hand on the wall beside Ellie's head and gripped her bruised thigh tightly. With each violent thrust, the creature pushed her aching body against the concrete, scraping the skin and rattling her skull. A few tearful gasps escaped Ellie's throat as the Red Pyramid released a low groan and, with a few last vigorous thrusts, forced the girl's bleeding sex to receive him. He held her there for a moment, reveling in the pain and exhaustion, before pulling himself away from the girl and letting her hang limply from the wall. Ellie stared at the floor in a daze as her chains were released, sending her toppling to the ground like a rag doll.

The heavy footsteps of the Red Pyramid passed by and left, the metallic screech of his sword following him. Ellie squeezed her limbs together tightly, feeling the blood leave her body but knowing that this pain would never kill her. Slowly, she reached out to grab the torn remains of her dress. Beneath a loose stone in the concrete, she found the spool of thread and the rusted, bent needle she had stored, and she began to mend what the creature had torn apart.

Just like before, Ellie would repair the seams of her dress only to watch it be ripped again.

_Don't forget, _Ellie thought to herself.

_You deserve this. _


End file.
